Sailer Special: “The Republican Devolution:” More Open Borders Shilling from the White House

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President Bush`s pollster
Matthew Dowd, who was the chief strategist for the
2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and is now the senior adviser
to the Republican National Committee, writes in a New
York Times op-ed called
The Mexican Evolution [August 1, 2005] that
the illegal immigration problem is solving itself.

Why? Because, in effect, the world
will soon run out of Mexicans. According to Dowd`s
crystal ball, all those Americans who are now worrying
their pretty little heads about illegal immigration are
in for a political come-uppance. Real Soon Now.

And as
these trends become more apparent to the public,
politicians running on an
anti-Mexican-immigrant platform will be seen as out
of step… But legislators and government agencies should
spend more time and resources addressing the problems of
immigrants already here and our direct security needs,
and much less time on
prescriptive laws aimed at stemming illegal
immigration from Mexico. We should be aware of the
historic transformations occurring in
Mexican society so that we aren`t fighting a war
that is already ending.

Dowd advises us all to just lie
back and enjoy illegal immigration for 20 more years,
and then it will go away.

Obviously, he wants us to ignore
the damage illegal immigration will do to America
between now and 2025, and how much trouble all the
illegals who get in between now and then will continue
to wreak after 2025. (Currently, almost
ten percent of all births within our borders are to
illegal aliens, and who knows what that fraction
will be in 2025 …)

But
chances are that there will be a substantial decrease in
illegal immigration from Mexico in the next 20 years,
and it won`t be because of civilian border patrols, laws
being passed, pronouncements by politicians, or as some
would like,
"building a wall on the border." Instead, the cause
will be demographic trends within Mexico itself, trends
that have been largely ignored in the debate over
immigration.

Mexico`s population growth rate has dropped by more than
50 percent during the last five decades, according to
the United Nations. The annual growth rate has declined
from approximately 3 percent in 1960 to 1.3 percent
today. And it is expected to continue to fall in the
first decades of the 21st century; by 2050, the United
Nations predicts, the rate will be negative. The
fertility rate in Mexico has had a corresponding
significant drop, from 6.9 children per woman in 1955 to
2.5 today.

The
population growth rate of Mexico is now only slightly
higher than that of
Canada, where recent data shows it to be 1 percent.
Twenty-five years ago, Mexico had a growth rate more
than twice that of Canada…

Uh, Matt, allow me to remind you
that a big reason Mexico`s population growth rate has
dropped to "only" 30 percent higher than Canada`s is
because of the on going
massive emigration from Mexico to the U.S. Close to
one-fifth of all people of Mexican descent in the
world now live in the U.S.

Why is there such a difference
between the rosy picture of Mexican population growth
that Dowd paints using dabs of data and the alarming
picture projected by our Census Bureau? Because Dowd is
conveniently ignoring what demographers call "population
momentum." "A population will typically grow for
50-60 years after reaching replacement level fertility,"and Mexico hasn`t even reached that birthrate yet.

"Population momentum" is a
little complicated to explain, but try thinking of it
from a grandparent`s perspective. Imagine two neighbors
comparing notes on who has more grandchildren. The one
who lives on the north side of the street says, "My
children each have two children in their families."

The neighbor who lives on the south
side of the street replies, "So do mine."

The northern neighbor says,
"Then you must have four grandchildren, just like me."

The southern neighbor laughs,
"No, I have eight grandchildren! See, you only had two
children, so you have four grandchildren. But I had four
children, so I have eight grandchildren."

In America, the white total
fertility rate (babies per woman lifetime)
dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 by 1972,
over three decades ago, so the white population has
almost stabilized by now. In
Mexico, however, the total fertility rate was 6.82
in 1970, 5.30 in 1980 and 3.61 in 1990, so there are a
whole lot of Mexican women
between ages 15 and 35 who are still having
children. Even if they only have the replacement rate
each, the total Mexican population will continue to rise
for decades.

Dowd`s commitment to telling us
only the cold-hard facts can be judged from this gem in
his op-ed:

Studies
have shown that as the population growth rate in
countries worldwide slows, migration drops. This is
especially true for an expanding economy like Mexico –
in one telling statistic, youth unemployment there
dropped to 4.1 percent in 2001 from 9.6 percent in 1995.

Sure, Matt, there`s no
statistic in the world more
trustworthy than the Mexican government`s youth
unemployment rate from four years ago! In contrast to
Dowd`s credulity, the
CIA World Factbook can`t force itself to report the
Mexican government`s official overall unemployment
figure with a straight face, feeling the need to add its
own scientific wild-ass guess to the absurdly low
official number:

Anyway, if Mexican population
growth is decelerating so fast and the "expanding"Mexican economy is providing employment for 96
percent of all Mexican youths, Matt, then how come
migration from Mexico hasn`t been
slowing down like those "studies" of yours
say it should?

A reader comments:

"Dowd`s
own data runs in the opposite direction of his theory.
When the Mexican birth rate was so much higher in 1960
we got far less immigration (illegal & otherwise) from
Mexico. The Mexican birth rate continues to fall yet
emigration continues to rise… Kind of a problem for a
theory when your numbers run 180 degrees in the opposite
direction."

Well, yes – but it`s only a problem
if you think of a "theory" as an aid in making more
correct predications about the real world. In contrast,
establishment Republicans (along with
postmodern feminist literary critics,
real estate salesmen and so many others these days)
conceive of a "theory" merely as something that
makes you feel better … temporarily.

The unfortunate truth is that
Mexico has not been closing the prosperity gap with
America. The
OECD reports, with bureaucratic understatement,
"Convergence in GDP per capita is a long way off."
Back in 1970, Mexico`s per capita GDP was 29 percent of
America`s. At the peak of the Mexican oil boom in 1980,
it was 36 percent. Today, however, it is only 25
percent.

That`s because "annual growth in
GDP per capita is stagnating" in Mexico, according
to the OECD, rising an average of only 0.1 percent per
year over 1994-2003. A major reason for Mexico`s
poverty, argues the OECD, is the lack of focus on
education by the government and people: only 21 percent
of Mexico`s 25-34 year olds have "upper secondary
educations," versus about 75 percent in the First
World OECD countries.

Indeed, it appears that some people
are migrating from Mexico to America in order to have
more children than they could afford to have back in
Mexico.

In the United States in 2003, the
official total fertility rate (projected babies per
lifetime) of Hispanic women was 2.8, up from 2.7 in
2002. That`s higher than in Mexico. (By the way,
45% of births to Hispanic women in America were
illegitimate.)

The 2003 total fertility rate for
women of specifically Mexican descent in the U.S. hasn`t
been released yet, but it
typically runs a little higher than the overall
Hispanic rate. It`s probably almost 3.0.

"In
2003 only the total fertility rate (“TFR”) for Hispanic
woman exceeded the level of “replacement“ (2,100
births per 1,000 women), the rate at which a given
generation can exactly replace itself. The TFRs for the
remaining groups (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic
black, AIAN, and API women) were below replacement."

As if this deception was not
enough, the Disingenuous Dowd is sidestepping the
crucial fact that the Mexican border is becoming a prime
conduit for "OTM" ("Other-Than-Mexico")
illegal immigrants, such as the swelling number of
Brazilian illegal immigrants.

"In
reality, almost five billion people (4,976 million to be
precise) live in countries where the average per capita
gross domestic product is lower than Mexico`s
mean of $9,600. (These numbers are from the
CIA World Factbook, and are calculated in terms
of purchasing power parity.)"

To take one example of a nation
that could start sending us large numbers of illegal
immigrants in the future,
Nigeria currently has a population of 129 million
with a GDP per capita of $1,000 annually. With Nigeria`s
current total fertility rate being 5.4 babies per woman,
the
Census Bureau projects that Nigeria`s population
will reach 357 million by mid-century. If they were
allowed to follow the Mexican example, 70 million of
them would be living here.

So, it is past time to crack down
on illegal immigration, including doing what the
Israel, the
European Union, and
India have all been doing lately: building a fence
along the border to keep illegal intruders out. It is
time to start thinking precisely – and honestly – about
the situation.

[Steve Sailer [emailhim] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and